Thursday, June 13, 2013

Have you ever wondered what books Jane Austen read? Or what her #1 pet peeve was?Find the answers to these questions in The List Lover’s Guide to Jane Austen, coming this June 2013.Released just in time for the 200th Anniversary of Pride & Prejudice, author Joan Strasbaugh is a “hard-core fan” and known in Jane circles around the world.Strasbaugh creates a portrait of this beloved author as a living, breathing human being; The List Lover’s Guide is perfect for any 18th century Brit lit buff. Austen aficionado or student of literature.Lists like “Her Social Circle” and “Balls and Dances She Attended” weave a seamless portrait of the woman that Austen was — not based on her fictions, but on her facts.While including extensive background information on the author (down to the very flowers she grew in her garden), the book also features juicy details like:· Possible Suitors· Who Broke Her Heart· The Hearts She Broke· Her Morbid Sense of Humor· Jane’s Royal Ancestors

List Lover’s Guide to Jane Austen by Joan Strasbaugh

June 2013, ISBN 9781402282034, Trade Paperback

$12.99 U.S. / £8.99 UK

"Who Broke Her Heart..."

Tom Lefroy

“You scold me so much in the nice long letter which I have this moment received from you, that I am almost afraid to tell you how my Irish friend and I behaved. Imagine to yourself everything most profligate and shocking in the way of dancing and sitting down together. I can expose myself however, only oncemore, because he leaves the country soon after next Friday, on which day we are to have a dance at Ashe after all. He is a very gentlemanlike, good--looking, pleasant young man, I assure you. But as to our having ever met, except at the three last balls, I cannot say much; for he is so excessively laughed at about me at Ashe, that he is ashamed of coming to Steventon, and ran away when we called on Mrs. Lefroy a few days ago.”

—Jane to Cassandra, January 9, 1796

The next Friday:

“At length the Day is come on which I am to flirt my last with Tom Lefroy, & when you receive this it will be over-—My tears flow as I write, at the melancholy idea.”

—Jane to Cassandra, January 15, 1796

Three years later in a letter to Cassandra she confides:

“Mrs. Lefroy did come last Wednesday, and the Harwoods came likewise, but very considerately paid their visit before Mrs. Lefroy’s arrival, with whom, in spite of interruptions both from my father and James, I was enough alone to hear all that was interesting, which you will easily credit when I tell you that of her nephew she said nothing at all, and of her friend very little. She did not once mention the name of the former to me, and I was too proud to make any enquiries; but on my father’s afterwards asking where he was, I learnt that he was gone back to London in his way to Ireland, where he is called to the Bar and means to practise.”

—Jane to Cassandra, November 17, 1798

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Joan Strasbaugh has been a proud Janeite for half of her life. She now works as the senior editor of Abbeville Press in New York, and notably organized the Jane Austen in the 21st Century Humanities Festival at the University of Wisconsin. A former publisher at Jones Books, Strasbaugh also holds a membership to the Jane Austen Society of North America.

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